Monday, September 09, 2002

Several articles about Roam AD Several articles about Roam AD from their homepage       5 September 3G: WiFi's New Clothes (from http://www.80211-planet.com/news/article/0,4000,1481_1459711,00.html) "RoamAD is a New Zealand company pioneering an enhancement to the IEEE 802.11b wireless standard that enables metro-wide mobile broadband connectivity." australia.internet.com RoamAD had to overcome four major obstacles that have been the reason why, to-date, 802.11b has not been deployed to service areas beyond those commonly referred to as 'hotspots'," according to CEO, Paul Stoddart. The first is security. "Traditionally 802.11b has relied on WEP," he says. "Much has been made in the IT&T arena about the WEP encryption protocol having been compromised. The emotive nature of security has been one of the key barriers to wholesale adoption of 802.11b."  RoamAD has developed their own security solution, a hybrid of proprietary network-edge security and industry standard data encryption. To access the network, an end-user must have a valid MAC address for their Wi-Fi device. Once access has been granted to the network, all data transmitted or received is encrypted based on IPSec. The second major obstacle is backhaul. Stoddart says, "one of the flaws in the hotspot model is that the operator must lease a terrestrial circuit from an incumbent network operator to provide connectivity between the hotspot and their network operations centre. The cost of these circuits represents a significant fixed cost that must be borne until an operator achieves critical mass."  "Furthermore, " he says, "the hotspot operator is reliant on the incumbent network operator to not only install but also dimension these circuits in a timely and cost- effective manner in the future. RoamAD's engineers have developed a wireless backhaul solution thereby avoiding the need to lease terrestrial circuits from the incumbent telecom operators." Coverage is the third major obstacle. "Traditionally, to receive coverage from an 802.11b access point an end-user must be within fifty metres and often within line-of- sight," according to Stoddart. "To an end-user this means that to gain access to a hotspot coverage area they are required to schedule a visit to a hotspot. This offers limited utility to an end-user by virtue of convenience. The RoamAD network solution has been designed to provide an end-user with ubiquitous coverage within the network area." The final obstacle is congestion. Wireless access points have become a dime a dozen, competing with each other for space within the 2.4Ghz range. "The RoamAD network architecture is a star-grid topology," he says. "To the end-user this means that at any point within the network they are supported by a minimum of four different access points."   The star-grid topology provides segmented coverage from multiple areas, redundancy of overlapping signals, diversity within the system, and a multitude of connection options for the end user in the case of outage or when a point is loaded. 2 September RoamAD Announce 802.11b Breakthrough "RoamAD, a New Zealand based wireless technology company, has just announced a genuine breakthrough in mobile broadband technology" New Zealand Wireless Data Forum 30 August 3G Functionality Right Here, Right Now "Within the RoamAD network, end-users already enjoy ubiquitous coverage and the ability to roam seamlessly with 100% committed information rates of anything up to 330Kbps" 3G.co.uk 29 August RoamAD unveils wide-area 802.11b wireless net "A New Zealand company has unveiled software that can turn 802.11b wireless LANS, with a reach of about 100 feet, into an always-on wireless mesh that can blanket hundreds of square kilomters" Network World Fusion 28 August Kiwi's Test World's Largest WLAN "A prototype wireless network, based on the 802.11b standard, in downtown Auckland is giving Kiwis a taste of high-speed mobile broadband without waiting for 3G" The Register   3:24:08 PM

© Copyright 2002 Jon Schull. Last update: 12/18/2002; 2:22:00 PM.